The first guru of the West
By Luz de Urquieta
In 1993, the celebrations in India, and in all the nations of the world, of the centenary of the birth of Paramahansa Yogananda, the first Hindu teacher who settled permanently in the West, renewed his message of love, faith and tolerance.
This holy man opened the way for the study of the common roots that exist in all religions in the 1920s, when he attended a congress of liberal religions in the United States, representing India.
He never woke up in the West - whose population is mostly Christian - controversy or rejection of his doctrine, because the message he had been asked to spread - Babaji, master avatar of modern India, and the venerated Hindu saint Lahiri Mahasaya, through his guru Sri Yukteswar Giri– pointed to tolerance, to the union of all religions and to understand that the sacred books of East and West, in their very foundations, offer the same teachings.
He described his teachers and his magical feats in his book " Autobiography of a Yogi ", a fascinating account of his search for truth, which is, in the present, a classic of religious literature.
His great contribution to the dissemination of Hindu philosophy in the Americas and Europe was his contribution to the science of Kriya Yoga, a psychophysiological technique taken from his teachers.
Yogananda, a true apostle of peace and a fervent believer in human brotherhood, left a legacy that continues to flourish and expand in all the countries of the Americas, Europe and Australia under the name of Self-Realization Fellowship, an organization founded in 1920 in California to spread its teachings in the West.
Although most of the teacher's life was spent in the West, India considers him one of his greatest saints. This was stated by the government of his native country when in 1977, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the mahasamadhi (death in meditation) of Paramahansa Yogananda, he issued a postal stamp in his homage.
He was born in the last decade of the nineteenth century, on January 5, 1893, in the city of Gorakhpur at the foot of the Himalayas, within a wealthy family belonging to the caste of the Kshatriyas, warriors and rulers, the second in the traditional caste system of India. He was given the name of Mukunda Lal Gosh and was the fourth child of a family of eight brothers, four women and four men.
His parents, Bhagabati Charan Gosh and his wife Gurru (Gyana Prabhal) Gosh, were fervent devotees and disciples of the great Hindu saint Lahiri Mahasaya, and raised their numerous offspring with great love and spiritual teachings.
From a very young age, Makunda helped her mother arrange offerings of fresh flowers impregnated in sandalwood pastes on the family altar where they venerated a picture of Saint Lahiri Mahasaya. Then, he accompanied her in her meditations and honored with incense and myrrh the divinity expressed in the portrait.
His parents initiated him at an early age in the technique of Kriya Yoga taught by Mahasaya and, on many occasions, the child experienced mystical ecstasies. He saw the teacher leave the picture frame and acquire a luminous body that sat next to him.
But the greatest miracle happened when he was eight years old and became seriously ill with Asian anger, then incurable.
Evicted by doctors, Mukunda agonized when his mother, accompanied by his older sister, Rome, hung the portrait of the saint in the room of the dying man, asking him to mentally prostrate himself before the teacher to heal him. The boy obeyed staring at the picture. Then there was a strange phenomenon witnessed by the whole family. From the portrait emanated a bright light that illuminated the entire room and enveloped the body of the patient. Immediately, Mukunda recovered, sitting up in the bed full of energies. His mother and aunt prostrated themselves before the miraculous photograph thanking Lahiri Mahasaya for the healing of the child.
From that occasion, he began to experience many spiritual visions when he meditated. On one occasion, he saw within a glowing, figures of saints in a posture of meditation and, when asking “What is that glow?”, A voice replied, “I am Ishwara” (I am light), which is the name Sanskrit to designate God in his aspect of cosmic legislator.
The Gosh family lived in different cities of India, as the head of the household held the position of vice president of the Bengal Nagpur railroad company, which allowed the mystic Mukunda to meet in the different cities that resided scientists, philosophers, saints, and Famous yogis of his time.
At age 11 he had an experience of extrasensory perception with his mother. His father had bought a large house in Calcutta and his mother was there, preparing the wedding of his older brother, Ananta. He and his father had not yet moved to that city and remained in Berelly, a town in northern India to which his father had been designated for a few years. Mukunda woke up at 4 in the morning and saw his mother by his bed. She whispered: "Wake up your father and take the first train to Calcutta" disappearing immediately. The boy conveyed the message to Bhagabati, but he did not believe him. The next morning a telegram arrived announcing that Gurru was seriously ill. They left immediately, but arrived too late. I was dead.
This great blow plunged Mukunda into deep sorrow. To console himself and to contemplate again the kind eyes of his mother, whom he considered his only and greatest friend, he assembled an altar to the Divine Mother, who in India is represented by the goddess Kali, and before him he meditated and prayed, in search of comfort. His fervor was rewarded.
In the meditation he completed the shining figure of the goddess Kali, who looked at him sweetly, saying: I am the one who has watched over you life after life in the tenderness of many mothers. Look at me and you will see your mother's eyes.
This vision cured his melancholy and gave him the comfort he sought, feeling since then happy to have been favored with the constant company of the Divine Mother.
Travel and teachers.
Restless and thirsty for spiritual teachings, Mukunda often escaped from home to climb the Himalayas and meet the meditating saints he saw in dreams and visions. But, again and again, his older brother, Ananta, prevented his escape.
His father, a widower and alone, in order that the child did not return to the paths that so distressed him, talked with him offering to give him tickets to know new places and, at the same time, meet some of your orders.
At 12, when the family was already installed in Calcutta, Mukunda traveled to the distant city of Benares, with a letter sent by his father to an acquaintance named Kedar Nath Babu. The child should contact him through a yogi friend of his father, in Saint Swami Pranabananda.
He arrived at the indicated address and the yogi, who did not know him and was not aware of his visit, when he saw him said: T you are the son of Bhagabati and bring an order . In those same moments he climbed the stairs of the Kedar Nath Babu house to meet the boy. It was a meeting of wonders, for Mukunda learned that while talking with Pranabananda, the saint's spiritual double had gone to Ganges to look for Kedar, who performed his morning ablutions on the sacred river. o. Both Kedar and Mukunda were dumbfounded at that wireless communication between the yogi, Bhagabati, and both contacted.
Laughing, Pranabananda told them: `` The phenomenal world has a subtle unity that is not hidden from true yogis. I see and convert instantly with my disciples from distant Calcutta. They also know how to transcend at will all the obstacles of dense matter . This teacher was the first to prophesy to the child: Your life belongs to the path of renunciation and yoga .
On the powers of telepathy and clairvoyance, of which he witnessed and experienced in himself in his childhood and youth, Yogananda wrote in his autobiography: O a day the science will confirm them.
Shortly after his death, from the 1960s, parapsychology was founded as an experimental science at Duke University, United States; and he pioneered the scientific investigation of the extrasensory perception of which some human beings are endowed, Dr. JB Rhine, founder of the statistical method that has proved, irrefutably, that the cases in which this phenomenon occurs mathematically exceed the law of chance and are not explainable by known objective or subjective cause.
Mukunda completed his secondary studies at an English school in Calcutta. His father, to avoid his mystical escapades, hired Swami Kebalananda, a renowned spiritual teacher and also a disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya as a private Sanskrit and scripture tutor.
Kebalananda was an authority in the shastras (sacred books) and Mukunda learned from him not only the holy scriptures but also the core of Mahasaya's teachings, which can be summed up in “the non-surrender to any enslaving faith, for the conviction of the presence Divine is achieved with the practice of Kriya Yoga. Only this method allows real contact with divinity, cleanses karma and makes it possible for the disciple to achieve enlightenment through personal effort. ”
In his teenage runs through Calcutta, he met several yogis who performed incredible feats. The master Gandha Baba was prodigies materializing on demand aromas, flowers and fruits through secrets learned in Tibet. The young man witnessed them.
At first he believed them as a result of hypnotism, but later he described them in his autobiography as “a conscious management of the pranic force (prana is the subtle energy of the Hindus), which is a vital force more refined than atomic energy and is composed of vitatrons that regulate the variations in the vibrations of electrons and protons of physical matter. Gandha Baba's secret was to get in tune with the pranic force, through certain yoga practices, guiding the Vitatrons to reorder their vibratory structure by materializing the result they wanted. His miracles were really simple materializations of earthly vibrations and not hypnotism. ”
He warned, however, that ostentatious yogic powers are not recommended by the great masters. These practices are entertaining and divert the true search for divinity: "Awakened in God, true saints make changes in this dream of the world through a will harmoniously consistent with that of the Dreamer of Cosmic Creation."
He finished his secondary education and refused to enroll in the University, which caused his father a great disgust, who, despite his disappointment authorized him to pick up at the Benares ashram directed by Swami Dayananda, where he remained shortly.
In 1910, when he was 17, he was on his way to the market to do some food shopping for the ashram, when he felt his body paralyzed when he saw a Swami at the bottom of a dead end street. His heart told him that this was the guru he was looking for. He ran to the stranger and fell on his knees to touch his feet. The Swami said to him: “My son, you have finally come to me. How many years have I been waiting for you? He was Sri Yukteswar Giri, also a disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya and very famous in Europe for having appeared in the book of the Oxford professor, Dr. WY Evans-Wentz, entitled Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines.
From his meeting with the teacher, he says in his autobiography: “The shadow of a lifetime has vanished from my heart, the vague search here and there had ended. I had finally found my eternal refuge under the cover of a true guru. ”
Mahasaya, considered Gñanavatar (incarnation of wisdom) of the India of his time, accepted it in his ashram in Serampore, a town very close to Calcutta, with a condition he had to return to the family home and study philosophy at the University. He prophesied: "You will travel to the West and to listen to the spiritual teaching that you must deliver it is necessary that you obtain a university degree."
The young Gosh, drunk by the encounter, returned to his larva of Calcutta, to the delight of his father and his brother Ananta who, already married, lived with his wife next to his father.
Although he had been initiated by his own parents and by Swami Kebalanda in the techniques of Kriya Yoga, Sri Yukteswar started it again in his ashram. At that moment, says Yogananda, “a great light opened passing in my being, like the glory of countless suns burning together. An impression of ineffable happiness flooded my heart to the deepest. ”
In 1915 he graduated from the University of Serampore (a subsidiary of Calcutta) as a Bachelor of Arts, and immediately his guru entered the order of the Swamis. He dyed ocher a piece of white silk cloth and offered it as his new Swami robe, prophesying again: "You will go to the West, there you like this fabric more than cotton . " Mukunda took the name of Yogananda, which means "happiness through divine union" and, like his teacher, was a Swami of the Giri branch, which means mountain. Other branches are Sagar = sea, Bharti = earth, Puri = land and Sarasvati = wisdom of nature.
With Sri Yukteswar he learned to master discomforts, such as the fierce mosquitoes of India, and to fully understand the concept of ahimsa, which not only means concretely not to kill, not to harm, but also implies not to think about damaging. The meaning of this aphorism of Patanjali is "to remove the desire to kill, " Yukteswar explained, clarifying to him that - man may be forced to exterminate harmful creatures, but he should not fall under the compulsion of anger or animosity. All forms of life are entitled to the air of Maya. ”
Under the guidance of his beloved guru, Yogananda understood that the human body is something precious, that of the highest value on the evolutionary scale by his brain and spinal centers, and that whoever seeks the truth allows him to express his divinity.
Yukteswar healed many sick people and also taught self-healing techniques. Of these, Yogananda says: “ I learned that thoughts can kill or get sick and also heal. Thought is a force like electricity and gravitation. The human mind is a spark of divine consciousness. All creation is governed by laws. Those that science has discovered are natural laws. But there are more subtle laws that govern the laws of consciousness and these can be known through the science of yoga. My teacher taught us that wisdom is the supreme medical therapy and that the body is a treacherous friend, you have to give it what it needs and no more. Pain and pleasure are transient. The yogi calmly copes with the changes rising above all dualities. Imagination is the door through which illness and healing also penetrate, so we have to distrust the reality of the ailment, even if you are sick, you have to reject the condition and it will leave ”.
Yogoda school
After being named Swami and inspired by the advice of Sri Yukteswar, who recommended charities, Yogananda founded in 1918, financially supported by the Maharaja of Kasimbazar, the Yogoda Satsanga Brahmarcharya Vidyataya school in Rinche, based on the educational ideas of the Rishis, which establish as a foundation the integral development of the body, intellect and spirit.
He was a teacher giving the children formal instruction and at the same time teaching them the practice of asanas and Yogoda techniques that consist of centralizing the vital energy in the medulla, and from there directing it to any part of the organism. But the essential purpose of the school was to instruct them in Kriya Yoga.
He instilled in his students that "evil is everything that leads to misfortune and good consists of all actions that produce true happiness . " The school expanded and the enrollment rose to one hundred children. Yogananda incorporated agricultural techniques and the practice of various sports; He did his outdoor classes.
Around the same time, the Nobel Prize poet of India, Rabindranath Tagore, ran his Santiniketan schools - "port of peace" - and interested in Yogoda techniques, invited the teacher to know his teaching system and exchange knowledge and methods of education. The money of his Nobel Prize had been invested in those schools, where he taught music and poetry outdoors, as in Yogananda, but excluding yogic techniques. From that visit a great friendship was born between the teacher and Tagore. The laureate poet's schools today are the Visva Bharati International University, and those of the teacher, the Yoats Satsanga Society of India .
In 1920, Sri Yukteswar's prophecy about Yogananda's trip to the West was fulfilled, which was partly, in turn, of predictions by Lahiri Mahasaya and the avatar Babaji. When he died, in 1895, Mahasaya had told his disciples more directly that 50 years later a Swami of his lineage would take yoga to the West, write a story of his life and talk about Babaji. This prophecy was fulfilled in 1945, when Yogananda finished writing his autobiography, including an account of the lives of his guru, Mahasaya and Babaji. In full expansion in the West, the Self-Realization Fellowship organization, in turn, disseminated the techniques of Kriya Yoga and the teachings of these great saints.
In 1920, the young Swami was invited to participate as a delegate of his country in the Congress of Liberal Religions to be held in the United States. Before leaving he had a vision of the Mahavatar (divine incarnation) Babaji, who instructed him to spread Kruya Yoga to unite all religions. "East and West, " he said, " must establish a true golden path of combined activity and spirituality." India has much to learn from the West in material development and, on the other hand, can teach you these universal methods that underlie religious beliefs on the basis of the science of yoga. ”
In August 1920, aboard the steam The City of Sparta, the first passenger ship leaving for America after World War I, departed Yogananda to the new world. During the two months that the trip lasted, he gave passengers several conferences on Hindu philosophy and religiosity.
The science of religion
On October 6, 1920, he gave his first conference in North America at the religious congress in Boston, which dealt with the science of religion, later published as a book. He declared: “Religion is universal and is one. Customs and convictions cannot be universalized, but there is one element common to every religion: the practice of devotion. ”
With the financial help of his father he remained in the United States for four more years, giving lectures and yoga classes, and wrote the book of poems Cantos del Alma with a preface by Dr. Frederick B. Robinson, president of the City College of New York. All their meetings had a massive audience that, according to the newspapers of the time, bordered about five to six thousand people. In those four years he taught in the United States the practice of positive affirmations, of prayers to obtain healing and the emission of healing vibrations. In 1924, he began a transcontinental journey through the United States and met Alaska. A year later, he had already founded Self-Realization Fellowship in Mount Washington in Los Angeles, California, where thousands of North American followers worked hard to help him in his work of spreading Kriya Yoga.
The power of his charisma and loving presence led him to the White House in Washington. He was received on January 24, 1927 by President Calvin Coolidge, who told him that he had read in the newspapers his brilliant lecturer career. It was the first time in the history of the United States and India, that a Swami was officially received by the first president of the powerful northern nation.
In 1929, he interrupted his work as a lecturer and educator of the science of yoga and traveled to Mexico, where he stayed at the residence of the president of that republic, Emilio Portes Gil.
Many of his little books were written during this period, including his work of inspiring prayers, Whispers of Eternity, which describes the deep feelings that arise in each human being when he specifically joins with divinity.
Thousands of people who professed Christian creeds read it, finding in it transcendent answers to the questions of the inquiring scientific mind that seeks God with intelligence.
The most outstanding American scientists and thinkers of the time praised his teachings. For example, Dr. Raymond F. Piper, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Syracuse in New York, labeled the teacher as “a saint, philosopher and poet, who, having experienced a multitude of the innumerable aspects of Ultimate Reality, He has created these wonderful meditations that lead to enriching experiences of happiness and joy. ”
Return to the old world
In June 1935, Yogananda started a world tour to Europe, the Middle East and India, accompanied by two North American followers. In London, he held a massive meeting in Caxton Hall. He immediately traveled to Germany to meet the stigmatized Therese Neumann. He continued his journey through Holland, France and the Swiss Alps. He made a special visit to the city of Assisi, in Italy, to honor St. Francis, apostle of humility. He continued his trip to Palestine to impregnate himself with the spirit of Christ in the Holy Land, passed through Egypt and then departed to India.
His years of absence had made him more famous and his country welcomed him with an extraordinary reception, headed by the Maharaja of Kasimbazar and his younger brother Bishnú. In his reunion, Sri Yukteswar granted him the title of the highest spirituality in India that is that of Paramahansa, being subsequently invited by the University of Calcutta to give several conferences.
In Wardha, he was the guest of the spiritual leader and liberator of India, Mahatma Gandhi, whom he initiated, in August 1935, in the techniques of Kriya Yoga. In January 1936, he attended the Kumbha Mela of that year, held in Allahabad. This traditional mass gathering of India attracts millions of devotees. In those days nobody kills an animal or drinks wine, does not negotiate or eat meat and the inhabitants of the region give free accommodation to santones or sadhues and swamis.
Two months later, on March 9, 1936, Sri Yukteswar died while Yogananda was on a tour of India, news that caused him great regret. On June 19, 1936, he was staying in a Mumbai hotel when his room was flooded with a glowing light and his teacher appeared with a material body, telling him to have incarnated on a planet in the astral world and transferring knowledge of the hidden dimensions . He was not the only one privileged to receive the radiant visit; other disciples also had such extraordinary communication.
After 16 months of touring Europe and Asia, he returned to the United States. In 1939, when World War II broke out, he received numerous letters from followers of England and other European countries. They claimed that the practice of Kriya Yoga allowed them to remain calm to bear, with integrity and without fear, the terrible warlike conflict that ravaged Europe.
In 1945, the fateful atomic bomb unleashed the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then Yogananda said that in our time, more than ever before, yoga should be disseminated with lessons sent by mail: “The world today does not have many teachers, but many sinners. Crowds should receive yoga through the individual study of instructions written by true yogis. ” The Self-Realization Fellowship organization adopted the advice and this is to date its style of instructing in Kriya Yoga.
A week before his departure from this world, Yogananda told his closest collaborators: "The work of my life is already complete . " The teacher, like all the great yogis who had preceded him, sensed that his death was near.
On March 7, 1952, moments after concluding a speech during a meal offered in honor of the Indian Ambassador, Binay R. Sen, in Los Angeles, California, he entered Mahasamadhi (voluntary abandonment of the body) and his spirit He escaped into subtle dimensions in which the holy yogis dwell.
Ambassador Sen, during his funerals, on March 11, 1952, in an emotional speech said: “If men like Paramahansa Yogananda worked at the United Nations, Earth would probably be a better place. No one has given more of himself or worked so hard to unite the peoples of India and the United States. ”
Forty years later, in 1992, Sen described the dramatic moments of Mahasamadhi in the preface to a book written by Sri Daya Mata, successor of the teacher in the direction of Self-Realization Fellowship: “When Yogananda left in Mahasamadhi, I felt, like that all present, that a great spirit left us. I also thought that none of us felt despair or grief over his departure, but rather a great exaltation for having witnessed a divine event.
Soon we will enter a new millennium and humanity feels threatened by darkness and confusion. The old style of facing country against country, religion against religion, and the human being against nature, must be transcended with a new spirit of universal love, understanding and concern for others. This is the eternal message of the wise men of India, the same one that Paramahansa Yogananda left in our times for future generations. I hope your torch, now in the hands of Sri Mata, will light the way for those millions of people who are looking for the course of their lives. ”
Yogananda quotes
THE MYSTERY OF LIFE
This admirable rotating planet and our human individuality were not given to us with the mere purpose that we existed for a time and then disappeared into nothingness, but with the purpose of wondering what sense everything makes. Living without understanding the purpose of life is a clumsiness and a waste of time. The mystery of life surrounds us, but we have intelligence to decipher it.
THE MONEY
When, having originally dedicated ourselves to making money for some purpose, we make money our goal, our madness has begun. That is when the medium is transformed into the end, and the true goal is lost sight of, and that is also when our misery begins.
THE POWER OF THE HUMAN WORD
The words full of sincerity, conviction, faith and intuition, act as highly explosive vibratory bombs, whose burst disintegrates the rocks of the difficulties operating the desired transformation ... When in the face of a conflict we repeat sincere affirmations, with full understanding, feeling and determination, they attract infallibly the help of the Omnipresent Vibratory Cosmic Force.
